its pretty obvious when he was refering to the mistakes he made, he cant have been refering to anything else

at least hes admitted that signing joke players from the top 2 pub sides in scotland wasnt a very bright thing to do considering they have never played against anyone better than st mirren, it was obvious they would struggle

Barry Robson scored against the Barcelona Arms and Scott McDonald netted a late winner against the Milan & Flag, in the International Breweries Invitational, and it was performances against these pub teams in particular that impressed Strachan, I think.

I loved it when people used to say Josh Walker should be in our team every week because he scored against Bayern Munich so he's obviously really good. Alves scored 2 against United FFS.

the morons defending the spl use the same logic to describe mcdonald and robson because they played well for 5 minutes against the old barcelona team 10 years ago that was average and always got beat in europe anyway

This thread is absolutely ridiculous. Strachan wasn't referring to all of the Scottish players he signed as well you know, dude.

Miller and Boyd, yes. The others are playing/will go on to play an important role for us. When he was on about 'mistakes', maybe he meant he regretted not giving Emnes, Bennett and Taylor more of a chance(as someone said above). Maybe he meant he regretted signing Kilgallon and Tavares(and using up the last of the wage-budget) instead of a striker or some wide players. Maybe he wished he'd brought in an experienced 'keeper to replace Jones and protect Steele. Maybe he meant he wished he hadn't signed so many central players and should have added some width instead, which would also have given him a 'plan B' when things weren't working(which he never gave himself the luxury of). Maybe his pre-season wasn't right, appointing Gary McAllister didn't last long either.

There are lots of mistakes he could be talking about. I don't think for one second that he automatically means 'SPL players are sh*te and I shouldn't have signed any of them...' when he talks about his spell with us.

Incidentally, Nicky Bailey has been immense for us since Christmas. Scott McDonald is our top-scorer, we miss Barry Robson when he isn't playing and McManus has done very well since returning to fitness.

I have respect for the bloke...... Thought it was big of him to admit he made mistakes...... He also said he looks out for our results and said he met alot of good people at the club ...... During the interview i dont recall him once saying i dropped a bollik with the SPL signings ??????

Perhaps Strachan is referring to the way that he managed to p1ss off enough of the players, fans and media within a short time of him arriving to make his job a whole lot harder than it should have been.

'Part of the deal when I went in there was I had to cut a lot of the big earners, who'd been there for a while'
Why hasn't the bloke who signed them, some still here, held his hands up?
He put us well and truly on the downward spiral.

Corcaigh_the_Cat, certain fans won't blame the clown because he lifted our only trophy, seems there was noone else involved in the cup run & eventual winners, I totally agree with you, he started the route towards sending us to oblivion, only for TM to save the Boro from potentially going bankrupcy

Strachan made some big mistakes, brought some poor players in and proved to be a very poor appointment. But at least he walked away with nothing and has admitted he got things wrong.

Southgate on the other hand signed the longest list of over-priced, overpaid tat in our history, took a lot of money from the club after leaving and still sits there with Tweedle Dee on ITV pretending to be an expert.

You couldn't sum ITV coverage up better than seeing Middlesbrough worst two managers since Bobby Murdoch as the only two expert summarisers on an FA Cup Semi Final between Man City and Man Utd.
It should be a mastercard advert, its f ucking priceless

Robson best midfielder ?????????
I like McManus but not even best centre back in our club.
McDonald should be a good player for £3.5m in this league. And he's OK and works hard.
Bailey is OK too but wouldn't call him a rock.

strachan was saying he knew so he didnt put of any future employers,he was never going to say that he couldnt understand why, is he? he knew exactly what he was doing, but underestimated the quality of the championship

if he doesnt understand english football now and how difficult the championship is, he will never understand it

You can't argue with his logic though - there is nothing else Strachan could have possibly meant other than he made mistakes in buying Scottish players. It's as plain as the nose on your face. Think about it - the myriad of decisions he must have made on a daily basis yet he meant only one thing in that interview. Thanks for pointing it out Dude.

As for this Strachan/Southgate debate. I'll just paste in what I put on another thread.:

@My view is pretty straightforward. Southgate was a disastrous appointment. He lived off the best that remained of McClaren's squad and by the time he had a squad in his image we went down.

In the Championship it is an absolute red herring to point to how far we were off the top when he left. The signs were there for everyone to see that this squad had some serious deficiencies. They became really obvious when Huth left and then, again, when Johnson left.

That said, what Southgate left had some good things and it didn't require the level of surgery that followed. Easy to say in hindsight but it is pretty clear now. If Southgate was too far towards Arsenal-lite then Strachan went too far towards Wimbledon-lite. In ripping the squad to bits and through his approach he stripped away the bad and good of Southgate's squad.

We are now seeing that the squad was never as bad as it seemed under Strachan with a proper, honest and thoughtful manager.

In that sense, I can see Corcaigh's point. Many of his signings have proven to be good ones. In addition to that Tony has been getting the best out of Southgate's players and players that were bombed by Strachan (like Bennett) and we're a lot better for it.

I am really interested to see what sort of side we will have next year after a proper transfer window and a proper run at a full season for Tony.

I'm excited about Boro's future and am looking forward to today's game like I used to. It's been a while.@

why does every thread about strachan's failings end up talking about southgate too. mowbray is proving the squad is a lot better than strachan was getting out of them. strachan took over when we were close to the top. he left us close to the bottom. clearly strachan didnt have a clue. had he stayed on we would probably be close to relegation if not in the bottom 3. far too arrogant for his own good and probably not liked by most of the players. totally wrong appointment for our club.

It's simple sas, it's because, the downward spiral since McClaren left can't all be Strachan's responsibility and so each of the 3 managers post McClaren are part of the discussion. It's the nature of it.

nice to see strachan make comments on how the club has to spend within its means..that didnt stop him being careless with the money available. i cant really think of any positives from his time as boro manager. I imagine he is too embarrased to go into detail.

maybe his arrogant attitude has been dented and if he does take a managers position he is less blinkered and is now willing to take on board otehr people's opinions

It was a case of 'my way or the highway' which didn't work with the new signings or our existing squad. His arrogance backfired bigtime.

He was a disaster which is more evident with what TM is doing with the same squad.

Southgate was a different matter ... his inexperience would have meant that he would have had to have spent more money than he did to balance things out but the money wasn't there. Had we had a more experienced and shrewd manager instead of Southgate, we would have clung onto to PL. The thing is I don't blame Southgate for his failure, I blame Gibson for appointing him, but I do with Strachan with his own failure ...

There was no spiral - we were 8th in the league in the November we went down and would have been joint 7th in December if the disputed Hull penalty wasn't given.

There was a spiraling down of quality players which was a club decision. We were playing our best football for many years versus West Ham (twice) and Liverpool and could (should) have scored 5 against Spurs if we'd taken our chances. Our demise started after this game when Southgate tried to (badly) defend our way to safety in the next few games. The difficult run in, and the Downing injury, finally out did us

squad didnt need a shake up to go on a promotion challenge. strachan was brought in cos gibson thought he would get mroe out of the players. it had the opposite effect and we won 1 in 9 games . then strachan decided the only option was to rebuild the team midseason with a load of crap loans and a couple of scottish players. then in th summer strachan covered his arse by telling gibson teh players werent fit enough. so gibson ask strachan how to fix it and so then he suggested la manga. most of the players wont have been happy with that. so again he lost more respect from the players.

his arrogance and man-management skills were his failings. mowbray has come in and got the players respect. lot more approachable manager. player like him. mowbray doing a lot better with the same squad minus a couple of players.

I disagree with you there Sas, I think it needed a shake up and surgery. Perhaps not as quick or as far reaching surgery as Strachan carried out but certainly a lot of work. We were a one man team after Huth left.

You're right . . I thought the penalty had come first and changed the game . . . but there was no evidence of a spiral until the last 4 months of season three in spite of having a rag-bag of players since McClaren left

squad was by far good enough to atleast be top 6.forget abotu the previous manager and just look at the quality of the squad relative to the rest of the league we had. i mean probably just as good squad as WBA.was daft time to sack southgate. strachan came in thinking he was the big manager with the proven record at celtic. it was like chucking a grenade in there. strachan is the worst boro manager in my lifetime. sometimes the face jsut doesnt fit and its a bad appointment from day one.

without doubt if strachan was still incharge we would be in a relegation dog fight now

shall i dig out strachans,southgates and mowbrays managerial records with boro in this league to prove my point?

It really wasn't sas. Take Johnson out and we had very little and certainly nowhere near as good a squad of players as some others.

I remember posting around that time that we were going to struggle because you could see it. For every good performances there was a dreadful one and I still believe it was right to get rid of Southgate. We weren't good enough and he wasn't going to put it right.

His signing of Caleb Folan and his 'debut' against a team that tore us apart summed that up for me.

Adi - I think Strachans approach to surgery ripped the existing team apart in more than a physical way.

At the time, many of us believed that the changes 'could be' for the better ... he was bringing in players he knew and had previous success with. Which was all fine, but the problem was his attitude towards the players.

You can do what you like with stats Sas but as I've said numerous times that you conveniently ignore, in Southgate's first two seasons he benefitted from McClaren's squad. As soon as he got his own we got relegated.

Strachan lost Johnson a few months in and he was what was propping Southgate's team up.

We first dropped into the relegation zone as early as January and apart from after the game against Liverpool, where we'd played a game more than the teams around us, we remained there.

The team that Southgate inherited was a good side and not that old, but would have to be changed (as all teams are) during his tenure. Partly due to the downward pressures on wages and partly due to mismanagement (not just his), we fell away badly as a club.

"You've lost me there with the 'rag bag' of players! What do you mean?"

When McClaren left, Southgate and / or the Boro stopped being the draw that either McClaren or high Boro wages were in the previous tenure. The new ethos was build on the academy and that was the first port of call for players - how many experienced pros would take the risk of joining such a 'rag bag'.

Not replacing Schwarzer (or not putting up a fight to keep him) and Viduka were ultimately the two biggest mistakes that Southgate and / or the Boro made . . . . Alves was never going to be the player to hold up the ball or win it from a throw-in in the penalty area, which was key to Southgate's style of play

schwazer left because the club couldnt afford hs wages and he wanted to leave anyway, cattermole and morrison couldnt even get into the team and yakubu ffs, it was daylight robbery us getting 12 million for him?

is that is captain,

3/10

if only we had kept all those players, we might be 3 or 4 points better of than we are now

A major re-structuring took place in March 2007 in terms of debt, shareholding and a number of other things. The clubs annual accounts that year revealed an annual wage bill of circa £28m, a rise from the previous year. In 07/08 our wage bill sat at £34.8m

In 2007 we had a £93m debt but £69m of that debt was loaned from the Gibson-O'Neill Company leaving a balance of circa £24m owed to lenders. Gibson subsequently wrote off the vast majority of that.

We have long since been towards the lower end of the Premiership wages league. It's not a new phenomenon that only Gareth had to contend with. Of course money had an impact, no-one is arguing otherwise.

The point I keep coming back to is this. We did not go down because of a lack of money. We went down because what money we did have was poorly invested by our manager.

You talk about a squad full of 40 year olds that Southgate suddenly had to cull and then a sudden wage slashing exercise. None of that is founded in reality.

The major wage cuts followed relegation, they didn’t precede it. During Southgate’s tenure there was a steady move to allow the club to stand on its own financial feet. That exercise actually began when McClaren joined. He talked about lowering the wage bill and ‘growing our own trees’.

Zenden had already gone, Viduka and Yakubu stayed for one season. Southgate chose to offload Morrison, Boateng, Cattermole and Rochemback.

He chose not to bring in a new keeper and he chose to bring in Mido and Alves.

He chose to decimate the midfield and replace it with Digard and Emnes.

Here is the squad list of players he took over with an asterisk next to those that he needed to replace immediately. The rest he had the benefit of for at least one or two seasons (so had time to plan and replace), he chose to let go (like Cattermole and Morrison) or stayed with him until relegation.

If you’re seriously saying it was a bad squad that Southgate was always going to struggle with then I will never, ever agree because I believe it to be nonsense.

McClaren's last season is also a red herring. he gave up on the league with half a dozen games to go and had more games to play than any other English club at the time hence we ended up in a false position, albeit finishing comfortably mid-table.

thats all very interesting adi, you still can't make a decent XI from that lot that are still playing at this date

so what your basically saying is that southgate is a poor manager because he couldn't achieve the same results mclaren did with a lower wage bill?

are you suggesting that if mclaren had remained in charge with a lower wage bill he would have attained similiar results, thats like criticising him for overspending in the first place for no reason

no adi, your very emotional as usual, and you use hindsight as a very selective tool, to try and emphasise points, but everything is always theoretical with you, it always has been

interesting how you put in brackets that mclaren arranged the huth deal, in his premiership years as a boro player huth hardly played and was constantly injured, is it because now hes playing well for stoke that mclaren gets all the credit

there isnt a player in that list southgate got rid of that is setting the world alight, thats a fact, all of them are on a downward curve or have remained at the same level at best

"so what your basically saying is that southgate is a poor manager because he couldn't achieve the same results mclaren did with a lower wage bill?

are you suggesting that if mclaren had remained in charge with a lower wage bill he would have attained similiar results, thats like criticising him for overspending in the first place for no reason"

No, read what I posted again and come back when you've understood it.

"no adi, your very emotional as usual, and you use hindsight as a very selective tool, to try and emphasise points, but everything is always theoretical with you, it always has been"

Does that even make sense to you, Dude?

I'll try and break that garbled nonsense down.

Emotional - really? Why is that then? Is it because I wrote a long and reasoned response that you can't deal with?

Hindsight as a selective tool? You'll have to explain that one to me. If hindsight is the word you want to use because all we have is a consideration of the past then fine. In reality, it's just an honest assessment of things that have gone before. I'm not sure how you can have a discussion like this without hindsight. Unless you have a De Lorean.

Everything is theoretical? Again, pretty meaningless but I'm not sure how I can give you a practical viewpoint as opposed to a theoretical one. You'll have to explain.

"there isnt a player in that list southgate got rid of that is setting the world alight, thats a fact, all of them are on a downward curve or have remained at the same level at best"

McClaren left 5 years ago. Maybe some of the players have changed a bit? We'd have fared better in Southgate's last season and certainly now had he kept hold of those average players.

Ahh, so when I ask you questions about your inane ramblings you can ignore them but you get a bit shirty if I don't answer your questions, even when they demonstrate that you have clearly missed the point?

OK then.

I haven't a clue how McClaren would have fared or, indeed, if certain players would have left. However, our wage bill was high, though not dramatically higher than it was under Southgate during McClaren's last season. One of the reasons for that was the size of the squad. We suddenly had to increase squad size in his last two seasons because of the number of fixtures we were going to have. That slightly skews the figures.

With no European fixtures the wage bill would have been trimmed, no doubt. Results may have suffered slightly because of that but equally they may have improved since we were playing less fixtures and wouldn't have given up on the final half a dozen games.

The only point I made is this, and it's a simple one. McClaren would have managed whatever funds we did have better than Southgate in my view. He would have made better decisions. As a result the results under McClaren, in my opinion, would have been better had McClaren remained manager. I also don't believe we would have been relegated.

Point me to where I said they were amazing, world class or good enough for Man Utd?

They were simply better than the crap Southgate replaced them with and would have given us a better chance of staying up, which is what you asked for.

If you are asking how many top quality players Southgate inherited then I would have mentioned Yak, Viduka, Schwarzer and the like but those players didn't fit within the strict criteria you yourself set.

i know, and so does everybody else, wages dictate the success of a club more than anything else, not crowds, tactics or nebulous spirits

mclarens boro would have struggled big time without the wages for big players, you only have to look at the results we had under him when our expensive 'stars' were missing, countless hammerings by the likes of arsenal and man utd, people tend to forgot some of the abysmal showings under mclaren when our expensive first team wasnt fit

Wages are part of success. No doubt. You asked a specific question about a specific time though. Wages went up under McClaren because of success and number of fixtures. When the wage bill dropped because we wouldn't need as big a squad I said there would likely be a downturn in results. However, that may have been offset by us playing fewer fixtures. In any event, the wage bills did not dramatically go up and down, they weren't massive increases and massive decreases and so I don't see how you can definitively say that results would have inevitably worsened.

You asked, with a specific set of criteria, for a list of players that would have meant us faring better under Southgate. I gave you the names. I think they were better players than the ones Southgate brought in.

You then mocked that list and blabbered on about world class, Fergie signings. I said that that wasn't what I was saying and that if you'd have wanted a list of players I considered to be top quality at the time McClaren left I'd have given a differentlist, that included Viduka, for example. I never said it was a mistake to let Viduka go (Southgate had no choice anyway). What I said was that he mismanaged buying replacements, which he had plenty of time to plan for and resolve.

Now, let me give you a word of advice. Grow up a bit, engage your brain and try and argue your point instead of making yourself look, frankly, stupid.

you have stated that you dont know if mclaren with less wages would have been succesfull

dont you see how odd that is in your argument, your praising mclaren for being more succesful than southgate due to higher wages, but you then sit on the fence by saying you dont know if given the same circumstances if mclaren would have had similiar results as southgate did with equal resources

so your bascially saying you dont know if mclaren was a better manager, as your admitting you are not sure what would have happened if he had to operate under the same finacial constraint as southgate did

well I thought the players he brought in were better than the players he inherited. Still do on the whole. Macmanus, macdonald, Bailey all first choice.

Thompson, flood and Halliday may come good. Boyd still scored 6 in 12 games while I know it has not worked but I think that is more to do with his wages. Robson.. Not sure about, looks to have lost interest to me. and miller was a joke.

I think what we ended up with after Southgate left was players on a lot of money who had to leave, Huth, Tunchay, Downing and Johnson. We could not afford them and they could not afford to play in the championship with a world cup around the corner.

I think strachan did what he could, to rebuild the team as quickly as possible. It just didnt work, he underestimated the championship big style. Getting rid of the younger lads like Taylor, Emnes, Grounds was not a wise choice and dropping Bennet? god knows why he did that.

By trachan bringing these players here has given Mogga a firmer footing than Southgate left Strachan.

"yet another thread about strachan gets deflected so the blame is on southgate again."

Well it's because you have to look at what Strachan inherited from Southgate. Some reckon it was good enough to launch a promotion push, some don't. I don't think it was good enough, to be honest, and was very much in favour of Strachan having a clear-out and rebuilding. Huth held the defence together at the start of the season and Johnson scored the goals to keep us near the top of the table. They were probably the best two players in the league and once they'd gone we looked like an average Championship side. An average Championship side that Southgate built whilst we were in the Premier League.

Southgate was the one who buggered the wage-bill up with the likes of Aliadiere, Digard, Mido and Hoyte. Strachan had to come in and try and clear that up, as well as getting rid of the likes of St.Ledger, Yeates and Shawky. Unfortunately he couldn't get results whilst the rebuild was in progress and our football was a very, very poor return for what money he did have to spend.

Both appointments will go down as disasters but Southgate, for me, was the worse of the two.

I don't know what lames terms are but what you've posted so far is pretty lame.

I'll put it in layman's for you:

McClaren would not have mismanaged the budget and would have signed better players than Southgate did. With exactly the same set of circumstances and budget for each manager, McClaren would have kept us up, yes.

Dude I honestly think any experianced manager would have kept us up and I include Strachan.

Southagte for me was out of his depth at Christmas and we should have cut our losses before the January transfer window, that would have given a new manager some scope to bring in a few players to avoid relegation.

I think appointing Southgate in the first place was wrong... But when it started going away from him we left him to it. At least Strachan had the balls to front it and say I cant do this and not milk the club for the wages for a job he could not do.

Problem is he didn't get the balance right and turned most of the squad against him with his arrogant attitude"

Have to agree with that PAMH. Most of his signings, taken on their own are decent players at this level. After the first home game v Ipswich, it was obvious to many, including me, that we still lacked pace, creativity and width. He never really got the blend right.

"Southgate was a different matter ... his inexperience would have meant that he would have had to have spent more money than he did to balance things out but the money wasn't there. Had we had a more experienced and shrewd manager instead of Southgate, we would have clung onto to PL. The thing is I don't blame Southgate for his failure, I blame Gibson for appointing him, but I do with Strachan with his own failure ... "

Have to agree with that comment. Southgate got the job before he was ready. He even said at the time that ideally he'd have a few years behind him in a coaching capacity. He was out of his depth. His task was made harder by the fact that much of McClaren's squad had come to the end of their usefulness and that costs were being cut due to having to reduce the debt.

I always read this sort of thing on here; 'He would have loved a few years experience behind him...', 'If he had some coaching experience under his belt...' and what have you.

Gibson was daft for offering him the job but Southgate was more daft for accepting it. If he cared about the club as much as he said he did(which I think he did) then surely, as one of the more intelligent and thoughtful people in the game, he would have turned the job down and made sure the club got someone in who could build on what McClaren left?

People can bang on about costs having to come down and whatnot but he still left us with Mido, O'Neil, Hoyte, Digard, Pogatetz, Aliadiere and Arca on huge money. He spent big money on Alves, Emnes and St.Ledger(!) so the money was there for him to spend.

Sorry to rant about Southgate again but i'm sick and tired of people trotting out the same old excuses for him and his terrible 'legacy'.

I also believe McClaren would have done a better job with a reduced budget.

Managers with the experience behind them SHOULD (ignores Strachan) be able to work within the constraints better. McClaren based purely on his experience alone should have been able to look at what was needed and work within that budget better than a bloke in his first managerial appointment.

you cannot use theoretical opinions to form a definitive assesment of the merit of 2 managers

it isnt even educated, as adi points out the wage bill is the single most essential variable when it comes to the quality of the playing squad, by tghat definition alone then it would be foolish to suggest mclaren would have had similiar team performances with a dimished wage

And nobody did Dude. That's the point you're missing. I am saying that McClaren would have outperformed Southgate with the same budget. That's it, not that McClaren would have done just as well as he had done with a reduced budget!!

There you go again with utter drivel.

"you cannot use theoretical opinions to form a definitive assesment of the merit of 2 managers"

It means you are trying to enforce , what is essentially a subjective theoretical assesment of what mclaren would have done with a dimished wage bill, you are 'saying McClaren would have outperformed southgate with the same budget' is no different to me saying he wouldnt